Chapter 134: Commandaria for the Winners

La Botte d’Oro stood at the foot of the Rialto, the most famous wine house in the Republic, and its famous barrel stood in the middle of the floor, broad as a gondola, with a brass tap a Doge had once tried to tax.

Tonight the tap trickled Commandaria, and every cup of it was Vito’s. The keeper had bought his casks from Marina Badoer and sold them for seven grossi a cup, and his goods returned to him one cup at a time.

The electors of San Michele had come for the free wine and stayed for the games. Some old patrician stood on the keeper’s bench with a ladle for a baton and a rule stolen from the Doge. Each man had to give a name aloud before he drank.

"My wife’s mother! God preserve her, in Padua, and at a distance!"

"The Pope’s mule! Holier than the Pope, and twice as sincere!"

"Giacomo Tiepolo’s CAT! Velvet-footed bandit of the lagoon! Purr on, you thief!"

The house lifted off its benches like a wave under a ship, and every cup in La Botte d’Oro rose to salute a cat who wasn’t there to be saluted.

By the canal, the Councillor for Dorsoduro stood on a table in his stockings, awake for once, conducting the singing with a string of sausages.

In the corner sat the eldest, Councillor for Cannaregio, straight as a mooring post, holding a cup and a tally stick on which he marked every name. The Republic might ask for it come dawn, and Cannaregio intended to have it ready.

Five electors had bound two benches together and were rowing them toward the canal while chanting the election results.

"Twenty-one, ah-HEY! Twenty-one, ah-HEY! Six! And twenty-TWO, ciò, twenty-TWO!"

Behind the barrel, the keeper kept a handbell that he rang for every bargain struck tonight.

Tiepolo had also sent a gift, and the rumor spread through the room faster than the wine. The bride’s ambassador, she was a brown goat with a split ear, bound to the table leg by a ribbon, and eating the tassel from a cushion in the lap of the gray-bearded elector.

At the head of the table sat Ranieri Dandolo in dark gown.

Vito walked toward him and the conversation flickered as the table noticed him. Ranieri’s eyes came up and he lifted one hand from the board, and his subordinates rose with him.

"Gentlemen!"

Even pitched low his voice spread throughout, and every head within three tables turned. "A matter of state! The bride’s ambassador and I have business, grave business, with this cadet. Ten paces, my friends, ten large paces, and drink to me from there! Where I can still hear you, and you can no longer hear me!"

The men took their ten paces, which in that house amounted to a closet, and the gray-bearded man brought the cushion with him. Naturally, the goat stayed.

Vito sat down. The back of his neck was still warm, as the [Occhio del Mercante] promised when the house he dealt with was reliable, and Ranieri’s stood as firmly as a stone pier.

Ranieri slid a folded leaf across the board with one finger.

"The goat arrived at my door with a boy, a ribbon and, santa pazienza, that."

Vito read three lines and laughed so hard the wine nearly slipped from the cup.

Ranieri took the leaf back and read it aloud in a bellow turned down. "To the Most Excellent Duke of Candia, from the cat of Giacomo Tiepolo, greetings. The cat concedes the goats and sends the bride. She bites, so feed her tolls."

He lowered the leaf with gravity, and let the silence ripen.

"She bites."

The goat, who had been waiting for her cue, bit the leaf.

Vito reached for the formal pleasantries like a doublet left on a peg and found it, to his mild astonishment, still warm.

He inclined his head jokingly. "Ser Ranieri. My lord Duke. Joy to you of the island, joy of the bride and, with all reverence, joy of her ambassador. May Candia keep you as long as it keeps its goats, and may neither of them eat the treasury."

"Barozzi."

The bellow stepped down, a bell now, heard through a floor.

Ranieri set the leaf aside, planted forearms on the board and leaned over. "My fellows voted for me because I pay on the day! They know me! But you, eh? Not a soul in this house, not one mona of them, can tell me why Vitale Barozzi spoke for Ranieri Dandolo. I have been Duke since the bell, and I still wonder what I owe you. So tell me, why?"

Vito laughed, and delivered the reply with unhurried seriousness. "The hills of Crete hear the voice long before they see the person, and I heard you, amico, from a cushion, across the whole breadth of the Council. A lord who can be heard on the ridge without a herald? Dio mio, what a bargain."

Ranieri let it stand. Such a tidy and useless reason meant the true one was left at home, so he nodded to it politely.

"I am told that island keeps its furniture where it stands."

His voice stopped into a rumble that still turned heads two tables away.

"Excellent, I say! Per Dio, I never move a chair until I know whose back will ache for it."

Vito turned his cup a quarter turn on the board. "Mine, mostly, Ranieri. A man set those rooms with no Duke to ask leave of, and the chairs, I assure you, are still warm."

"Then I shall sit, Barozzi, and let your handiwork be admired by all the world!"

Ranieri leaned back until the bench whined, and the voice that came next had lost every trace of the performance. "The Count of Malta! You flung his name at the whole palace like a glove on the floor. Tell me true, how long before he comes?"

Vito replied without a flicker. "The corsair waits for the sea to open, like every reasonable thief. A year. Two, if the Republic has been kind to its saints."

The lamp guttered once.

"He comes where the lord is cheap."

Ranieri slapped the board with the flat of his hand, and the goat’s ribbon jumped. "Then I shall be the dearest lord on all the water! So dear the Count of Malta will need three galleys and a banker to afford me! Hah! Why, I have already cost my father a disowning!"

Vito raised his cup to it as to a departed friend.

"A magnificent disowning, Ser Ranieri. I nearly wept, and the whole hall believed every syllable."

"The whole hall was meant to! Meant to, ciò!"

His face stayed flat as a flagstone while his voice went up the bell-tower. "Three nights we rehearsed it, over broth. Three! ’I do not... know... that gentleman.’ Ah! He had the pause by the second night, the pause, Barozzi, the PAUSE! Listen, every bench in that hall was afraid of the surname Dandolo, but a son his father throws out the door? The quarrel is a coat, Barozzi, a coat, and, Madonna, how beautifully it fits me!"

Vito set down his cup, the very picture of injured innocence.

"And here I thought my mouth had a part in the play."

"Your mouth was an improvisation, Barozzi, and a brutal one! My bench went over all by itself, all by itself, and the bruise it left me has your name on it. In capitals!"

He prodded his ribs with one thick finger and winced for the benefit of the gallery.

Under the table, the goat finished the tassel, looked over the world, and tore the gold-thread Lion from the edge of Vito’s mantle. Both men looked down as the Lion of St. Mark hung from her like a trophy, and she chewed it with satisfaction that had long suspected the Republic was edible.

Ranieri’s face broke open from beard to eyebrow. The cathedral finally came out of him, a laugh that rattled the cups on the next table and interrupted the singing at the water-gate.

Vito’s doublet came off in the same breath.

"Cazzo, she’s eaten San Marco!"

He was laughing too hard to keep the formal pleasantries. "The Lion, look, look, the whole gold Lion, gone down her gullet like a Lenten herring! Duke since noon and already your bride has taken a bite out of the Republic!

Both had brought one cup while the house drank its barrel down to the staves. Ranieri looked at Vito’s, Vito looked at his, and they both grinned.

Ranieri boomed. "I was second in every count there is! Second in the guild, second in the Council, second at my father’s table, Madonna help me, second in the soup! And today I win one, ONE, on the strength of a cracked voice. Ebbene! I intend to lose the habit slowly, slowly, like easing myself into a hot bath."

Vito grinned at him over the cup. "A year I spent raising an island, Ranieri, stone by stone, and I send it away in the time it takes a candle to drown. Now I intend to be unemployed, with great energy, with discipline, with a rigorous program of idleness."

A shadow rolled across the board. The old man had come down from his bench to collect, ladle held like a scepter, swaying like a shutter in a draft.

He told both men. "A name! Aloud! And then, only then, a cup! The Doge’s rule, messeri, the Doge’s own! And since the Doge is at home tonight, slurping his broth, I enforce it twice!"

Ranieri set down his cup, planted hands on the board and hauled the whole cathedral up into his throat, nave, bells and all.

"BAROZZI!"

Vito laughed and matched the thunderous note in the way he could.

"Dandolo!"

Their cups met across the goat’s back with a clap like a small bell, and Commandaria dripped down both wrists.

The house stared for one breath, then it came apart.

The electors dropped their benches, a cheer rattled the staves of the barrel, and the whole room took up the two names and threw them across the floor...

"Ba-ROZ-zi! Dan-DO-lo! Ba-ROZ-zi! Dan-DO-lo!"

... like a pair of bells.

In the corner, Cannaregio lifted his cup.

"Item. Entered, and witnessed."

Then he drained it to the dregs.

Dorsoduro fell from his table into the arms of the room, still singing.

Over the roar, the keeper pulled the sock from his handbell and rang it once, the note he kept for the best bargain ever struck under his roof. Not a soul in La Botte d’Oro could tell what the bargain was.

The goat bleated to the bell.